ZAIN BLAIR

In an exclusive interview with the Bowdoin Harpoon, mathematics major Isaiah Williams ‘26 shared what has influenced his academic decisions during his time at Bowdoin.

“I don’t know exactly what sparked my curiosity in mathematics. I mean, for one thing, I was always pretty good at fractions in elementary school. Like when the teacher first told us about fractions I remember everyone else being confused, but I just totally got it,” explained Williams, his eyes growing wide with excitement and his pupils dilating at the mere thought of conducting math problems with fractions. “Of course, anyone can do multiplication or division with fractions because that’s just like normal multiplication, but I’m really good at adding and subtracting fractions too. I can even add fractions with different bottom numbers, which most people think is impossible. What you have to do is take the two bottom numbers and find their least common multiple and then increase each top number by the same factor that you increased its bottom number. Then you can add the top numbers and keep the bottom number the same. It’s all pretty complicated, so I get it if you don’t understand.” Williams added that while the kids at his elementary school would answer math questions with decimals or integers, he always insisted on using fractions for all his answers, not because he didn’t know how to do the other stuff, but because of how good he was with the fractions. When we asked Williams what math course he is currently taking, he told us that he actually hasn’t learned any more advanced math like calculus and has yet to take a course in the Bowdoin Mathematics department, mainly because he is worried that it won’t just be about fractions.